No matter how bad sequestration might be for a wide range of Greater Washington businesses, there is a group of people who could be in a good spot to make money: the federal employees’ plaintiff bar.

As deep budget cuts loom, federal agencies are poised to formally notify hundreds of thousands of workers about unpaid furloughs in the coming days, which will put in motion the workers’ due process rights under federal law.

“Each one of those have the right to challenge the furloughs,” said John Mahoney, chair of the labor and employment law practice group at Tully Rinckey PLLC.

Mahoney believes as much as a quarter of the federal workforce will challenge the furloughs through one avenue or another, providing a huge opportunity for private-practice lawyers. Agencies themselves might even reach out for help from law firms because their ability to defend themselves could be affected by budget cuts. That goes for the agencies that would hear the cases too.

Of course, a large quantity of complaints doesn’t necessarily mean they are all valid, as lawyers who doubt the business prospects of sequestration say.

The government probably won’t have much difficulty fending off challenges given the circumstances of the federal budget cuts, said Ed Passman, a founding principal of Passman & Kaplan PC in the District,

“I certainly don’t object to getting business, but we’re not going to take cases just because employees are getting furloughed,” Passman said. “If they furlough without proper notice or don’t give procedural due process, I’d be interested in that, but I don’t expect that to happen on a big scale.”

Every federal employee has a right to a 30-day notice of a furlough and then the right to challenge it. One popular option would be to argue that the furloughs disproportionately affected a protected class of workers (which would be heard by the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission). Certain workers might appeal up to the Merit Systems Protection Board.

“We don’t know if it’s going to be a whole dam breaking down, or just a trickle,” Eisenmann told the magazine.

Unionized employees would be able to file unfair labor practice complaints if they could prove agencies didn’t negotiate the implementation of the furloughs adequately.

Kenneth Wu, a partner at Reston-based Lopez & Wu Attorneys and Counselors at Law PLLC, acknowledges the long path that challenges would take, but still sees an opportunity.

“Certainly, I would expect to have a lot of calls from federal employees requesting assistance,” Wu said, noting that even claims ultimately rejected would still require staff work and possibly legal expertise to navigate.

“There’d still be an inquiry,” he said. “They’re not going to just take an agency’s word for it, because everybody else is doing it.”

Lawyers also know that Congress could forestall furloughs at any time, without a lot of notice.

“It remains to be seen whether there are any meritorious reasons to challenge the furloughs,” said Stefan Sutich, general counsel of the National Federation of Federal Employees, a union with about 110,000 members. “It’s really a wait and see.”